Winter Blues

With the onset of winter over here in Australia, I was wondering why I was growing so sluggish, and found this disorder when googling---- SAD, or Seasonal Affective Disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasonal_affective_disorder , also known as Winter Blues. They seem to have medications for everything these days, however, since I try to stick to natural cures whenever possible, some of the home remedies that I have found useful are acupressure and foot reflexology. See the books on my carousel by Dr Dhiren. The only problem I find is that these technics are time consuming because they have to be done daily.

Also, I have tried various pilates DVDs, but my favourite is Rael's Pilates. He has 3 levels according to difficulty levels --- System 7, System 17 and System 27 (easiest to hardest), but System 17 is my favourite. It is really relaxing and his voice is quite hypnotic. He is very strict about the breathing, hence I get to oxygenate my blood much more than I normally do. After a session, I can feel my blood circulating and have much more energy. Again, this has to be done daily to feel the effects.

Other common sense approaches to beating the winter blues would be exposure to sunlight (pretty hard to find this week in Melbourne) every day and a good diet with loads of supplements. Also good ventilation in the house helps. If you're afraid of the house getting too cold if you open the windows, try the HRV system http://www.hrv.com.au/ or something similar in your area. It provides fresh air while moderating the temperature in your house while the windows are closed. Even if you don't have the winter blues these health tips will boost your immune system and might prevent you catching any bugs (like the swine flu)!

Sewing Curtains

When we built our house, we did not realize that there would be so many pluses to our budget ---- one of which was the curtains. To cut costs, I decided to sew our day curtains. The night curtains were too heavy so we got them sewn at the shop, and asked for double tracks (and enough gliders) so that I could hang my day curtains too. If you seldom open the day curtains, just let them know that you want it to just run in one direction, so you can save on some sewing, and you don't get to see any seams when the night curtains are open.

To get nice gathers, we bought our cloth 2.5 times the width of our curtain track, and a similar length of gathering tape. Factor in about 12 cm extra each for the top and bottom double-folds, and about 4cm each for the two sides' double folds. Double fold the rough edges and sew them near the folded edge. For the top, double fold the rough edges and sew the gathering tape straight on along all its edges. Pull the gathering strings from both ends until the correct width of the curtain track is attained. Secure the strings at both ends so that they don't move anymore, put in curtain hooks about 6 cm apart into the gathering tape, and hang. If you are ambitious and want more elaborate designs, there's a whole lot of styles out there to choose from too.

Table for 12

When we were shopping around for a huge table to entertain at least a dozen guests, we were greatly disappointed that we couldn't find anything. So in the end, we had a great idea. Why not combine our recreation with our entertainment and get a table tennis table (Dimensions L=274 cm, W=153cm, H=75cm)? Of course, if you want to do that, you have to make sure the legs of the table tennis table do not obstruct your guests legs --- and you need a table cloth. All you need to sew the table cloth is a simple sewing machine and to be able to sew a straight line. And while you're at it, you can also sew matching placemats, drink coasters and a table runner style pot coaster.

Spiritual Health

In lots of movies, the central theme is about the robot or mutant spending lots of time trying to find its creator to find out why it was made, how it came about etc. If only we could be as obsessed to find out more about our universe and our creator. Well, if you can only spare 24 hours in this pursuit, I would highly recommend Chuck Missler's 'Learn the bible in 24 hours'. I have just started the first two hours and though it is deep (Chuck Missler is really into Science and Space Technology), his references to Scripture and the History and Laws of the Universe are really intriguing. He deciphers our creator's manual (the bible) in a way that makes you think, "Why didn't I think of that?"

To learn more about his publications click Here. If you decide to get the audio version, I would recommend you also get the workbook so that you'll have some visual notes to understand his explanations.

Diet Books

If you're like me, you'll have heaps of diet books on your shelf. Every Christmas holiday season I will put on a few kilos which refuse to shed no matter how 'good' I try to be. So off to the bookstore to get one more book. Various books work differently for me. But I found Atkins to be the most helpful of all, maybe because I like meat and eggs. I lost 8kgs from that and to date haven't gained most of it back though I'm no longer on that diet (I'm too 'creative' to stick to one diet for long!).

I've tried the CSIRO diet (books 1 and 2) and my kids loved the food there. There were more carbs., but my weight loss was minimal, maybe because I wasn't following it strictly enough (a few miserable squares of chocolate a week wasn't enough for me!) But it was from here that I got disciplined enough to plan my recipes one month at a time because they have 12 weeks of recipes and shopping lists in each book.

I've also bought Dr Sandra Cabot's liver cleansing diet book. There were some good health tips there, but I couldn't stick to it because like I said, I love meat! Her book on 'Raw Juices Can Save Your Life!'was intriguing. It listed 66 health problems (eg. allergies, high cholesterol, diabetes, cancer and weight excess)and the juice combinations and food supplements which can help each of these problems .

This year, my sister-in-law recommended the book 'Eat Right for your Type' (ie. blood type) by Dr Peter J. D' Adamo because she and her husband lost lots of weight doing that and lowered their cholesterol too! I bought the book straight away because the first thing it said on the blurb for my blood type was 'Eat meat'. I'll let you know the results hopefully soon.

I've displayed my diet books in my online store just click here for their details and if you want to purchase them through amazon.

Facebook

You're never too old to use Facebook! Look at this article in Telegraph it says that over a quarter of Facebook users in Britain are over 50 and it has overtaken email in popularity. If you spend a lot of time at home, it is a good way to maintain social connections. Search up your school best friend whom you had lost contact with. Share photos with beloved relatives living overseas. There are also heaps of applications you can install in your facebook account: Some of my favourites are:
1. Circle of mums which will enable you to connect with specific categories of mums like mums with allergic children or Christian mums etc.
2. Game applications like Word Challenge, Word Twist, Scramble and Pathwords, interesting word games which you can challenge your Facebook friends with or play on your own. My son likes Pet Society where he races his virtually created pet with his friends' pet in order to earn virtual coins which he then uses to furnish his virtual pet's virtual house!
3. Gift applications where you can give various types of virtual gifts to friends. Some can also keep track of your friends' Birthdays so you won't ever forget to send a birthday card again (even though its virtual!). Before Christmas, you can put up a virtual Christmas tree on your site and give out virtual Christmas gifts to your friends, which will be placed under their virtual Christmas tree until Christmas Day (after all its the thought that counts right?).

Best of all, all this virtual stuff is for free. Even joining Facebook, so give it a go by clicking the link below.

Facebook

Gordon Ramsay

Though we may prefer watching movies to cooking, this is something most stay-home mums have to do. I try to make it as painless as possible by choosing easy, healthy recipes. I try to minimise grocery shopping to once a week by planning my recipes for the whole month from a book like Gordon Ramsay's, then drawing up a shopping list like this on my Excel spreadsheet. Once this planning is done, I don't have to crack my head on what to cook for the rest of the month! By the way, my family loves Gordon Ramsay's recipes though I don't approve of his language!